12/26/12

Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday, spent time with family and friends, and had some well deserved rest!

Carbohydrates: The True Fuel To Perform

Carbohydrates: These come in all forms, from natural sources like fruits, to veggies, to tubers like potatoes and turnips, to processed forms like flour, HFCS (high fructose corn syrup), table sugar (sucrose) and pasta. A quick primer on the different forms of carbs looks like this:

Glucose: The most basic and more easily used sugar. Broken down from starch (potatoes, rice, corn) Fructose: Found in fruit. Preferential to the liver, NOT skeletal muscle. Lactose: Found in dairy, broken down into glucose and galactose. Can be problematic in some folks. HFCS: Acronym for high-fructose corn syrup, which is usually either 55% or 42% fructose.

One of the biggest misconceptions is that low carb = health = athletic performance; while different authorities continue to argue, two main facts exists that are specific to HIIT (high-intensity interval training) athletics:

1)Intense, short duration training in the glycolytic pathway utilizes muscle and hepatic glycogen—this must be present for performance, and replaced for recovery